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Civic Engagement Toolbox For Self-Advocates

Right now, many people are getting involved in political advocacy for the first time. People are going to town hall meetings and making phone calls to their members of Congress. They’re writing letters and using social media to organize advocacy groups.

This new wave of political advocacy is incredible. And people with disabilities need to be a part of that. That’s why we’re pleased to announce a new series of plain language toolkits. These toolkits focus on the basics of civic engagement. Civic engagement means actively participating in our democracy. In a democracy, regular people choose, or elect, who gets to be in government. The people we elect should listen to our concerns and advocate for us in the government. But when they don’t do that, we have the right to make our voices heard. In short, civic engagement means:

learning about how the government works, and

making sure that the people we elect to government listen to us.

They Work For Us: A Self-Advocate’s Guide to Getting Through to your Elected Officials

The first toolkit is “They Work For Us: A Self-Advocate’s Guide to Getting Through to your Elected Officials.” This toolkit is about:

who our elected officials are, and

what strategies self-advocates can use to get our voices heard by the people we elect to represent us.

They Work For Us covers:

Who our elected officials are

How to contact your elected officials

Strategies, scripts, and templates to help you effectively communicate with your elected officials

How to use social media for political advocacy

Plain Language Version

Some parts of the toolkit are available as short stand-alone fact sheets. Click the links below to download the toolkit and fact sheets as PDF files. The PDFs are screenreader-accessible.

The Easy Read Edition is split into parts. Each part has its own glossary, and there is also a separate glossary with all of the terms from every section. Click on the title of any of the parts below to download it: